Are your guests having a hard time with the TV remote?

There are at least 2-5 remote controls on the coffee table of most of my clients. One for the TV, one for the cable box (which is suppose to control the TV also), one for the Roku/AppleTV, and one for the DVD/Blu-Ray player.

A ‘smart’ remote is one that is programmed by an installer, or a consumer**, when you only want ONE remote to control all of your home entertainment equipment***. A real home theater uses a Surround Sound Receiver to send audio to 5-13 speakers within your room.

You might be use to turning on the system with many remote controls, but a typical powering on process is like this:

- Turn on TV
- Turn on surround receiver
- Turn on cable/sat box
- Make sure TV has booted up (all home entertainment equipment takes time to turn on, like a computer) before sending the command to change your HDMI video input
- Surround receiver has to be booted to send the command to switch from watching Cable, Blu-Ray, Roku, Xbox, etc
- NOW you are ready to watch TV, but why is there no volume? This can happen when the last person left the system on a low volume or because the TV can see the image but your surround receiver is behind a door so you do not know if it turned on.

This can be a frustrating process, especially for guests, your parents or grandparents, and especially for AirBnb or vacation renters that are only there for a few days trying to decipher your ‘How To’ sheet to turn on the system.

If you are a household that has a cable or satellite box, and are using the smart apps built into your TV, you probably don’t need a ‘smart’ remote. Either you are using the TV speakers, or have a sound bar connected to the TV, and therefore only need one remote.


** We highly recommend an installation company, like Technical Visionaries program your remote as Infrared/IR can be very finicky, and there are a lot of tricks to overcome issue’s with equipment behind cabinet doors.

*** Only equipment that came with a remote control can be controlled by a smart remote, and in very rare cases, that equipment cannot be controlled, like tape decks and turntables.